Saturday Musings: The Long Day

For most if not all of my parenting life--that is, eighteen and a half years--Saturdays have possessed a particular dilemma. That is, what to DO. Perhaps it's because we have never lived near family, so we don't have the ability to visit aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandparents. Perhaps it is because we don't load the kids up with activities, so there have rarely been sports practice or music lessons or whatever else it is all the seemingly busy people do on Saturdays. Perhaps it is because my husband has always had to work for at least part of the day on Saturday, so a day-long family activity (not that my teenagers would go for this AT ALL) is not possible.

So. Here I am on yet another Saturday, wondering how to fill what feels a very long day without relying too much on TV and the constant promise of Netflix Kids. My three oldest kids are busy--a field trip to London, a rounders game, and Saturday school for one, which generally takes cares of him. So I'm left with my two youngest, ages four and eight, to fill the day with some kind of fun or at least fruitful activity.

Today I'm planning on a trip the library and garden centre, and then a jaunt in the afternoon to buy new school shoes and pick up some flower boxes I had ordered. We might play a game of Shopping List or Sushi Go, and I might even motivate to bake something with two little helpers.

But I know it will feel like a long day, a day that needs to be endlessly filled, and I wonder, do other parents feel this way? Do they view Saturdays with a mixture of anticipation and dread? And one day, when my youngest are teenagers and disappearing with their own plans, will I miss these oh-so long Saturdays? Or will I just finally be thankful to be able to relax?

Doing Good

Last night at church our sermon was on the verse from Titus, "be ready to do whatever is good". The minister talked about volunteering even when you don't feel like it, looking out for opportunities to encourage, etc, but I must admit I felt a little bit flummoxed. My own life, especially in a new place where I don't know many people at all, feels as if it is very few opportunities to do good, at least outside my family. My average weekday has me ferrying children to and fro, making meals, doing laundry, and writing. My only interactions are the chitchat on the school run (and even that is limited--today it was raining, and I drove) and the occasional conversation in a shop or the library that rarely rises above the banal. Admittedly I am hoping this will change when I meet a few more people, whenever that happens. But how to do good in my wider community? How to make a difference?

That got me thinking about writing, and whether the stories I tell are 'doing good'. I like to think so, although part of me doubts whether one of my frothy romances really does much good in this world! But I have received emails and letters from readers who have been touched by my stories and in some cases encouraged to think deeply about certain issues, and for that I am grateful.

I suppose every one of us has to consider what good we are doing in the world. Our tendency is to default to ourselves--look at any two year old hoarding her toys--but we also desire to do good, to make a positive difference, in part, I think, because it makes us feel good. My children started to experience this when they began picking out presents for their siblings at Christmas. They were all far more excited to give than to receive. My husband and I continue to try to show them ways to serve rather than be served, but in all honesty it is increasingly hard in this self-sufficient world where people hoard their privacy and hide behind electronic devices. Still, we need to try.

So here I am on a rainy Monday morning, sitting at my kitchen table wondering how to make a difference in this world. I guess it's time to start writing!

Snow... or not

Last week it snowed here in the village. Not a lot of snow, mind you. Living as we do on the coast, we rarely get more than a generous dusting. People are still talking about the winter of 2010-2011, before we moved here, when it snowed an entire FOUR INCHES. Roads were closed, and food had to be shipped into the village by sea from Whitehaven. I kid you not.

As a former New Englander, I scoff a bit at this, I admit. When we lived in Connecticut we had several major snowstorms each winter, and by major I mean anywhere from 18 inches to 2 and a half feet of snow. But New England is prepared for that kind of snow. Within hours of the snow stopping, the ploughs are out and the streets are mainly clear.

My husband and I were reminiscing about the snowstorms in New England. There is something very serene and beautiful about a world blanketed in snow. I think the thing I miss most of all is the sense of peaceful silence. Everything is muted by snow; no one is out. The world is covered in softness. Of course, in a few days or weeks, that softness is grimy, grey, and making life generally difficult with puddles of icy slush--when we lived in New York City, there were absolutely treacherous puddles on the curbs of certain intersections, and the worst part was, they didn't look that deep. So you'd step into one only to find yourself sinking into icy, dirty water halfway up to your knee. Yuck.

So I don't miss that.

But snow can be magical, and when it snowed here last week (maybe a quarter of an inch, gone within an hour) my six-year-old daughter was absolutely entranced. She doesn't remember the snows in New York, and she gazed around in rapture at the snow still coming down and said, 'This is the best day EVER. There is so much to SEE!'

I'd like a little of her youthful wonder and exuberance, myself.

It was supposed to snow last night but there is nary a flake on the ground this morning. However, the distant fells look like this:

So really, I can't complain.

The Beauty of The Bath

I once wrote a short story about the different bathrooms, and mainly bathtubs, that a couple had through their married life, and how each bathroom/tub represented a different stage of life. I was inspired by my own life, because in some ways I can track our marriage (and family life) through our bathtubs.

Take the first bathtub we had, in a flat in Cambridge, England. We lived in the top floor of a nineteenth-century vicarage near Newnham College, and the bathtub was a lovely, long, claw-footed masterpiece that invited deep, long, bubbly soaks. Unfortunately, there was only enough hot water to fill it to about two inches. My husband was a theology student, we were ridiculously poor, and this tub pretty much summed up our life. When I became pregnant that year, my husband very kindly would boil kettles of water and pour them into the tub so I could have a bath--one of the only things that helped with my morning sickness. I have memories of sitting in the tub, naked and shivering, in two inches of hot water while my husband hurried to boil kettle after kettle, dear man.

We moved to a college flat the next year, in the top of a bell tower, and this time we had a deep tub and unlimited hot water. Bliss! Plus the bathroom was on a floor above our flat, having to go up eleven twisting, turret stairs, and you couldn't hear a baby crying from it, which was also bliss. My husband would take our squally newborn for an hour while I would lie in the tub and wonder just what we'd taken on. Sometimes I still wonder that.

Next tub was the house of my husband's first curacy. Tiny, olive-green, in a semidetached house in Hull. We had two children and very few baths.

Moving on to America: a decent tub but not extraordinary by any means. Three children, and the bathtub usually saw them all squeezed in there together, water slopping over the sides.

And then New York: no bathtub, but two marble showers. Which sounds far more luxurious than the 1950s box-like apartment was, but at least the kids liked it and one of the showers was a two-person one which meant you could bung them all in there together for a quick evening bath, or rather, shower time.

And finally here, the bathtub in a two hundred year old vicarage. Six feet long, nice and deep, and an immersion heater to make sure you have all the hot water you could ever need. And, quite importantly, a fan in the bathroom that keeps you from hearing the often-incessant knocking on the door, the requests to play a game, mediate an argument, find hockey kit, and/or free up the bathroom for the other six people in the house.

I've been taking a lot of baths here. In winter, I take one almost every night. And no, I don't have a compulsion to be clean. You could say I have a compulsion to sink into deep, hot, bubbly water, sip a glass of wine, and read my book. After a long day working, writing, cooking, cleaning, and managing the lives of five children, a half-hour or so in the bath brings me back to a good and peaceful place. And, as a bonus, it keeps me warm! Even with new windows our house can be a bit draughty (but that's a whole other post) and I love going to bed with my skin still lightly steaming.

You could say my bath is my guilty pleasure, but I don't feel remotely guilty about it.